A few years ago Britain’s Nigel Farage was a polit­i­cal curios­i­ty, head of a fringe par­ty, gad­fly mem­ber of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, an ex-com­modi­ties bro­ker who nev­er went to col­lege, dis­missed as a nut­ter by rul­ing elites in Lon­don and Brus­sels. On 23 June 2016, he was wide­ly cred­it­ed with a key role in the ref­er­en­dum favor­ing Brex­it— Britain’s exit from the Euro­pean Com­mu­ni­ty.